Author: paulattinello
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[untitled]
The classroom reeks of undergraduates. The walls lethargic beige, the chattering, resentful, handsome faces, golden thighs. A grimy fog of answers, questions lost, and every year they miss the point again. The concrete park outside is filled with bursts of advertising, merchandise that blares with stenciled letters, mascots, girls’ glazed smiles. The struggle ended years…
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Suspendu
Hanging between: the restaurant banquet table, and the bathroom door. Or at the table, D– on one side, B– on the other. Between the conversation and the piano: and the imagination of doing something with the piano. Standing among D–’s explications and my doubts. The walk home – between these green summer trees and blue…
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A weekend unblogg’d
“Another lapse in this book, I must confess; but if I do it against my humour I shall begin to loathe it; so the one chance of life it has is to submit to lapses uncomplainingly.” – Virginia Woolf, diaries, 23 October 1917 Friday two students called me back to work after I’d gone home,…
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X-Persons
Went and saw X-Men III tonight. Enjoyed the gay metaphor at the beginning – rather touching really, especially with the lonely teenagers – and some of the setup was impressive; the ending was rather flat of course (why, in an age where fantasy and science fiction films are so amazing looking – finally; I love…
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Spacious
Detachment, coolness, space: long sunny days. There’s a lot of work – this is the week when we spend hours deciding and negotiating final marks, sitting in judgment over undergraduate and postgraduate – and there is plenty of administration waiting, not to mention research, demanding attention at every corner. But I am somehow calmer than…
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Stimulus / Response
[Los Angeles, 1991] You are still in your bathrobe. You’ve been tired, irritable all morning, avoiding thinking or thinking about thinking, wandering around staring at the undone dishes in the sink, the hairs in the bathtub. Wishing it would all go away, picking up a sponge and putting it down again, trying to force yourself…
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Airports
(Rilke’s Last Flight) We walk inside huge jewels, ropes of white tourmalines, square-faceted; we straggle, silent, lonely, lost – The varied forms of faces thaw from fears or sudden loves, melt with unwelcome passions, freeze again; Then, waiting in black fields of chairs, we dream of those we nearly knew: we breathe the sun, we…
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Controlled spaces
I have always (at least since I was very young, and sharing a room with my rather controlling, sometimes combative older brother) been meticulous about my home. Given the vast number of books this involves, and the huge number of moves between 1992 and 2002 (about fourteen, if I have counted right – some of…
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Homes
Had it all gone differently: places I might live, might have lived. Places where I would grow old, or live with someone, or be enmeshed in a different pattern of people and behavior. Some are pretty obvious: the upper floor of a Victorian in the hills south of 18th around Castro, in San Francisco. Gentle,…
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Postcards
Flying, flying, endless air. Half asleep, we watch clouds For evidence of a plan, For our real destination. ••• My arms sleep in white sand. Palm trees relax, stretch, flow easily. I’m sitting by the ocean for days. I don’t know where I am. Find me. ••• The wind explodes, Fires lake-ice into my eyes.…
Paul Attinello 